"Open House" Forum With Gov. Deval Patrick

Rep. Jay Kaufman's award winning public policy forum, "OPEN HOUSE,"kicks off its 16th season with Gov. Deval Patrick headlining the first forum, "A Conversation with the Governor," on Monday, Oct. 11 at 7 p.m.

While forums are normally held at the historic Depot building in Lexington Center, this special forum will take place at Cary Hall, 1605 Massachusetts Ave., both to accommodate the large audience expected and to have the ability to broadcast the event live on local cable television. As with every forum, audience participation is encouraged and questions and comments from the floor will shape the discussion.

In over 15 years and almost 150 "OPEN HOUSE" forums, Kaufman has had numerous Cabinet Secretaries, Legislative leaders, advocacy group heads and academic leaders, but this is the first forum with a sitting governor.

While the location is Cary Hall and time is now 7 p.m., the forum will essentially remain the same. In the interests of time, however, questions must be written out in advance and submitted for consideration.

If your question is chosen, you will be asked by Rep. Kaufman to approach one of the two standing microphone (similar to Town Meeting) and read your question to the governor. By structuring the format in this manner, we hope to be able to provide the Governor with as many questions as time permits and of the broadest topics possible.

A table to submit questions will open at 6 p.m., and close promptly at 6:55 p.m. If you would like to submit a question for consideration, please get to Cary Hall early.

Upon taking office in 1995, Rep. Kaufman sought to provide a vehicle for discussing the challenges and opportunities facing our community and Commonwealth on a regular basis. While most of his colleagues appear occasionally on local cable access shows, the format is invariably one-sided, as there is no real way to engage the viewer. In the early '90s, the open town meeting format was just coming into its own, and offered a new, albeit challenging, way to engage constituents in important public policy conversations.

Over its first 15 years, OPEN HOUSE has addressed issues ranging from reinventing public education to gay marriage, property tax relief to campaign finance reform, the shrinking middle class to stem cell research, the nature of political leadership to the challenges of effecting fundamental change in a democracy.

In 1997, OPEN HOUSE was awarded the prestigious Beacon Award, cable television's equivalent of an Emmy, as the nation's best government relations series. The series was also named the best television series by Massachusetts Cable Television Commission.

The OPEN HOUSE series is produced through a partnership between Rep.Kaufman and LexMedia, which records the forums for broadcast in Lexington, Arlington and Woburn.